had an odd wistful look, which made him seem older than ever. But everybody was so intent with their own pursuits that they did not notice.

He got on rather slowly with his work. He often found himself musing, staring out of the window or at the ceiling, and thinking nothing at all of Patent Law.

Towards the end of the second week Elaine and Allington went out sailing just after lunch, and Derwent Findlay, Q.C., went into the odd-shaped room to commence a new chapter. He worked for two hours-worked and musedspending a great deal more time thinking of Elaine than of the intricacies of a famous case upon which he was working. Then it suddenly dawned upon him that he had great difficulty in seeing.

"It's quite dark," he said. "It's really most extraordinary. Not five yet and quite dark! I-I can't be getting short-sighted. I've always had good eyes, and after all fifty's no age, Eh? no age at all. What? Who's there?"

Some one had knocked at the door, some one threw the door open jerkily and came in in a flutter of alarmvague, weak, feminine alarm. It was Mrs. Buckiston.

"My dear Derwent," she cried breathlessly, "have you noticed the storm which is brewing?"

"Storm-eh? Where?" "It's as dark as night."

a

"Dark! Storm? Thank goodness!" "What? And Elaine on the sea?" "Elaine! I never thought of her. 1 thought-never mind what I thought! Elaine! On the sea and storm! Come! We must go. Elaine! O God!" He went out of the room Mrs. Buckiston following, wringing her hands. He went out of the house bareheaded, and the wind came and smote him. There was a blackness over the land. Out at sea were light lines in the heav

ens, and the waves were running in, white-crested, to break on the pebbles of the beach.

He hurried down a steep way to the shore, stumbling, shuffling, slipping, but with no thought for its steepness. On the beach were a few long-shoremen watching a light boat battling with the waters. Mrs. Buckiston followed him at a long while, consumed in finding a securer way.

"My good men," he said tremulously to the boatmen, "can we launch a boat? I will give any sum to launch a boat. I must go to them!"

"No boat could be launched in that surf, sir," said one of them.

"It must be!" he cried. "I-I will go alone if none will come with me. I used to be a strong rower. My God!" he added, with a sudden burst of emotion, "I can't stand and wait-I can't!"

"There's a fishin' smack after her," the man said. "She'll do a power more good than you or I. Bill Perkins is in her-Bill's a bloomin' good sailor."

The barrister watched the drama intently, watched the little craft battle and the smack growing nearer.

"Lor' 'elp me," said the boatman, "but that gent knows 'ow to 'andle a boat. 'E's a well-plucked un, 'e is!"

In a dream Derwent Findlay, Q.C., watched, watched until a cheer which sounded a long way off, but was really at his elbow, marked the saving of the two dim figures by the smack.

He was on the pier when they landed.

"God bless you, Allington!" he said, but the artist wrung his hand and passed on. "Elaine! Elaine!!" he cried, with no other words at his command, and she smiled through white lips, but looked after Allington hungrily.

That evening the barrister watched the two very closely, saw their studious avoidance of each other, noted how their eyes sought each other, and turned aside when their glances met.

"It was too late," he said. "Twentyfive years ago it might have been different, but now it is too late. I'm old, quite old. It is natural-they can't help it, and thank God! Allington is a good fellow, a damned good fellow!"

There was sunshine in the garden in the morning, sunshine which filtered through the trees and made lacework of light upon the grass.

Derwent Findlay sought out his nephew.

"Allington," he said, "come with me. I want to talk over matters with Elaine and you-you must come. She is sitting on the seat under the chestnut."

"Sir, I cannot," Allington answered. The barrister passed his arm through the younger man's.

"Yes, Allington, you must humor your uncle. We have only just found each other, eh? Gad, after all we are the only ones of the family andcome!"

They found Elaine with a piece of work idling in her lap.

"Elaine!"

She started and looked up.

"You-you have run away from mefrom the Patent Law, eh? You are a truant, eh? God bless my soul, I ought to be angry, eh?"

"Indeed-"

"You must not interrupt. I-I am putting my case. There has been a mistake somewhere, eh? Those twentyfive years have come back with a rush. I tried to forget 'em, but they won't be forgotten. Yesterday you-you and Allington were face to face with death. Then you found out what I have seen for the last few days. I am an old man. I have really no business to be

The Argosy.

that at my time of life. You are young, Elaine, and-and it is no good linking a young life to an old one. It would never work, never. Stop, don't say a word. It would be very uncomfortable for us both. Here's Allington. He's a good fellow-he is my brother's son. And he is young, there are no twenty-five years to come thrusting their noses into his life; he hasn't accumulated dust and old-fashioned notions. You found out that you loved each other yesterday. Oh, yes, I know. I-I have learnt to see in the last few weeks."

"Sir," said Allington.

You

"No, don't say anything, just take her hand. There, that's better. I-I have made rather a hash of the case, but my judgment's right now. must be very good to her-but there, you love her and she loves you, andand it's all right, eh? I will give Elaine away. Why, bless me, she might have been my daughter. If-if I had understood I might have had just such a daughter now when- Isn't it lucky we found out the mistake in time, eh? God bless my soul, I wonder what Mervyn would say if he knew. I haven't made such a mistake for years. There, not a word. Oh, I'll make it right with Mrs. Buckiston. She will be pleased. I am glad."

When he got back to his room and his work on Patent Law, Derwent Findlay looked at the pile of papers and at his books.

"I never knew that the law was so dry and musty, and full of ashes until to-day. God bless my Elaine; she has shown me a little of the sunshine of life, and it is well that I have seen before I go over to the great majority. God bless Elaine and Allington."

Walter E. Grogan.

Apart from its immediate political and military details, the sudden conflict of China, not with one foreign Power but with all the great Powers of Europe, and the United States of America, is an event of a singularly interesting and singularly suggestive character. It may be taken as a symbol of the beginning of an event which both the philosophical and religious thinker must have long waited for as one demanded by the fitness of things in the great drama of human civilization. Sir Henry Maine, discussing democratic theories of progress, insisted on the fact that what is commonly called progress is not, as many superficial theorists argue, a phenomenon in any way characteristic of the human race generally; but is on the contrary exceptional and confined to a small portion of it. He pointed out, with impressive and caustic eloquence, that the vast populations of the East, which form still the bulk of humanity, are not only out of sympathy with our Western dreams of progress but regard the very idea of change with hostility and intense disgust; and he argued from this fact that the millennium of universal democracy, to which European enthusiasts look forward as the inevitable destiny of mankind, is a feverish and foolish fancy.

In present circumstances it is well worthy of consideration whether these difficulties, which stand in the way of a belief in the ultimate triumph through the world of the civilization of the Western nations, are not beginning at length to be dissolved by the chemistry of events-by a process which may prove extremely slow, but which nevertheless is now visibly beginning. It is unnecessary to remind the most careless student of history that the

causes of war, so far as the Western nations have been concerned in it, or the causes which have threatened to produce it, have during the latter portion of the nineteenth century been, to an increasing extent, causes which have had to do with the relations between the civilized Powers of Europe -the Powers which are distinctly progressive and the stationary or semicivilized races, which are overwhelmingly more numerous, and occupy a larger portion of the habitable surface of the globe. The fact is one which deserves a kind of attention deeper than that which politicians are accustomed to give to it. The political events and the political complications in which it manifests itself are rightly and inevitably uppermost in the minds of practical statesmen. But behind these events and developments of the hour, the day, the year, the fact has other and deeper aspects, which appeal to those elements of larger thought and philosophy, that, to a greater or less extent, exist in the minds of most of us. For these multiplying points of contact between the progressive minority of the human race and the stationary or semi-civilized majority, and the political events arising from them, are not isolated phenomena, and are not accidental phenomena, in the sense in which many conflicts between the civilized Powers may be called so. They are not due, for example, as was the war of American independence or the war between France and Prussia, to causes which might have been obviated by sound policy or neutralized by astute diplomacy; nor are they due to the exceptional activity of exceptional men such as Napoleon. They are due to causes of a wider and inevitable kind, which neither genius,

nor diplomacy, nor sound statesmanship, nor religion can resist. They are due fundamentally to that astonishing and inexorable process-the growth of population amongst all progressive races-and behind this process lies another which preceded, and which also accompanies it-the development of the mechanical arts, of the means of travelling, of transmitting news, of diffusing education, and of stimulating thought. Owing to these causes, the progressive races of the world are no longer merely progressive, but they have come inevitably to be expansive. Take the case of our own country. Not only has the growth of population in these islands resulted in a constant overflow of emigrants to other portions of the world, but the bulk of the population which still remains at home has become notoriously and increasingly dependent for the means of subsistence on other, and on distant countries; and the significance of this fact is increased when we remember that by the word "subsistence," all political thinkers agree to include, on behalf of even the poorest classes, not merely the necessaries of life but a growing portion of its luxuries. However much some people may try to shut their eyes to the fact, the corporate income of any closely populated country, the population of which is advancing at once in numbers and in its standard of living, can only keep pace with their national requirements by a corresponding growth in the volume of commodities for which other countries will give it their own products in exchange, or by the establishment in other countries of a certain proportion of its citi

zens.

The inevitable tendency of progress amongst the progressive nations is to make the entire world economically one single country, whose various districts are becoming more closely dependent on one another. The sparsely occupied

regions are becoming like wastes and commons, which, in the interests of all classes, must sooner or later be enclosed, and the non-progressive and semi-civilized nations are coming to occupy the position of a half-educated lower class, which the progressive nations, alike in its interest and their own, must gradually educate and subject to the laws of progress, and compel to bear its part in the maintenance of a common life. In other words the progress of the progressive nations is becoming increasingly identified with the civilization of the semi-civilized nations a process which, whatever it may be else, is on its material side invariably economic and commercial. Thus the impact of the progressive nations on the unprogressive and the semi-civilized and their constant endeavor to force themselves into sparsely populated countries, which of late have been the main cause of war and international complications, are, we repeat, not causes of a transitory or accidental character. They are causes which are world-wide in their operation, inexorable in their tendency, and must necessarily continue to influence the destinies of the human race beyond the farthest horizon of time which can be reached by reasonable calculation. This process, however, though its proximate origin is economic, is not one which will be only or even mainly economic in its results. Economic processes, with military force subserving them, are the physical basis of civilization, just as the brain is the physical basis of thought; but they are not civilization itself. They carry with them the civilization of art, of politics, of philosophy and of religion-the civilization which centres itself in the idea of what man is and what is the meaning of his existence; and together with the material impact of the progressive nations on the nonprogressive will come the collision be

tween Western thought and Orientalbetween the religious ideas of the Buddhist and the Mahommedan and the religious ideas of the nations which have risen under the influence of Christianity. What will be the result when Eastern thought and Western meet in this intimate manner on a ground that will be common to both, it is not possible to say. The present religion of

The Saturday Review.

the West had its origin in the East; and just as conquered Greece gave conquering Rome its art, so once more may the spiritual ideas of the East have some unconjecturable effect on the spiritual ideas of Europe. But whatever may be the result, we may assure ourselves that we are now at last listening to the overture to a new act in the drama of human history.

It was a child who said of a neglected heap of latter-day nurserybooks-which to the grown-up mind looked attractive enough to please any child's fancy-"They are very nice, only I don't want to read them. Everything is all right, except the story." And then, struck with a sudden inspiration, added: "Couldn't you make up a proper story about the pictures?"

Child-like, she had gone straight to the point, and had put her finger on the spot of failure when she said: "Everything is all right but the story." It is the story that fails. It has lost the art of holding the children's attention, because it is, for the most part, above their heads. The truth is that the author of to-day, however clever he may be, and however good his intention of amusing the youngsters, will never gain their affections until he has lost the trick he has fallen into of keeping his eye on the grown-up audience while he is telling the children stories. They must have his whole attention or he will lose theirs. If he would succeed in his task he must give himself up unreservedly to his legitimate audience, and enter into their world and their moods.

By doing so he will find that his task becomes far easier of accomplishment. He will not be handicapped by all those many things which prevented him letting his imagination have full play while his eyes rested upon the critical grown-up audience.

Think what "Alice in Wonderland” and "Alice Through the LookingGlass" would have lost had their author kept his eye upon the grown-up audience, instead of giving himself to a world peopled by little folk. who saw nothing strange in rabbits talking, mock-turtles weeping, and pigs turning into babies, and who accepted strange creatures like the Jabberwock as calmly as they did the imperiousness of a Queen who ordered massacres with Royal indifference as to whether they were carried out or not. It was an ideal audience and one to inspire an author. For, even if the children saw nothing of the whimsical adherence to the forms of logic in the stories of Alice's Adventures, they nevertheless revelled in the quaint mixture of sense and nonsense which so exactly hit their childish level and caught their fancy, holding them entranced with its dreamlike unity. The stories possess very much the same at